Tea Leaves

One of the advantages to owning a nearly-obsolete PC is that you know off the bat that the latest and greatest games won’t run on it. So rather than spend $49.99 on the latest releases, which, let’s be frank, are usually not that good, you can hit the bargain shelf and find games for $10 or less. You’ve heard me talk about this before, as the “kielbasa sandwich in Chiodo’s” effect: it may not be a great sandwich, but it was only $2, so who cares?

My favorite bargain rack, currently, is the one at Electronics Boutique. EB is already predisposed to dump their PC game stock — the real money is in consoles, after all — so you can find some great deals on preowned PC games there. This weekend I picked up four titles, three of which I’ve been actually able to play.

Myst III: Exile ($4.99)

Myst 3: Exile

I’m enjoying this. It’s been a while — years — since I’ve played any of the Myst games. Some of the mystery of the larger game is dissipated off the bat by the presentation of the plot on a silver platter, but perhaps that is to be expected of a sequel. Once you’re past the cheesy dialogue, though, the game has the right feel.
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Every so often, I forget that many PC games are bug-riddled sacks of garbage. When this happens, I go out and buy a couple, until I remember why I was driven to transfer most of my gaming to dedicated consoles. This is sad, since PC games do have a rich and storied history, and address a market that is not adequately served by consoles (that market being “people willing to spend way too much money on games.”)

Many of you style yourselves “game developers” and write computer programs that you call “games.” From this point forward, all games that you develop must conform to the following requirements. Those who produce games that do not meet these criteria will be punished.
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Andrew Tepper

Continuing our focus on A Tale in the Desert, here is an interview with the Pharaoh of this particular Egypt, Andrew (”Teppy”) Tepper, the game’s designer and President of eGenesis, its publisher.

Typically, interviews like this focus on the gameplay design or community development. I’m less interested in that (in part because I think you can often explore those aspects by simply playing the game). Instead, my aim for this interview was to focus specifically on the actual technical development challenges in creating a complex online game with a small team, something that few of us have done. If you’re want details about the game itself, you might want to look at my recent review. I reached Andrew at home, just after he had finished up work for the evening.
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I don’t buy too many games the day they come out, so by the time I’m done with one it’s been around a while. Here are some thoughts on a couple of games that have been around for a while.

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The gamer’s complaint of “we want innovative games!” is one that the industry has learned, through experience, to ignore. Some gamers want innovative games. Most gamers say they want innovative games, but really the marketplace proves that — as a group — they want derivative games that carry the illusion of being innovative. This is doubly true in the tired and pretty much creatively dead genre of multiplayer online role-playing games, which combine the kludgy game mechanics of any mediocre game that is five years out of date with the social culture of IRC and the lousy user interface of a MUD. (As I speak, some commissar in the politburo of pretentiousness is marking me down for the next purge for referring to this technology as “multiplayer online game” rather than “virtual world.” History, however, will be on my side).

When innovative games do come along, it often takes us a long time to recognize them. I’ve been playing the A Tale in the Desert II beta lately — I played the original game last year, but never wrote about it — and I think it’s innovative enough that anyone who is interested in online games should at least try it. Whether or not one wants to actually pay to keep playing it is, of course, a matter of taste.

There are a few things I find intriguing about A Tale in the Desert. I like the mise-en-scène. I like that there’s no combat at all — not against other players, not against bad guys or monsters. I like the sheer size of the land (which, while not actually as large as the real Egypt, manages to feel like it is). I like the tech tree that punishes antisocial people (like me!) who try to build everything by themselves. I like that technologies are locked until enough people in an area cooperate to open them up.
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I have cancelled my City of Heroes account. It was fun while it lasted, but eventually I realized that my main motivation was to see cool super powers and beat up computer controlled bad guys. City of Heroes did that very effectively, but so does Diablo II, and that doesn’t charge me $15 a month for the privilege.

However, I have once again gotten entangled in the intriguing game A Tale in the Desert, this time as part of the beta test for the next version. Watch this space for an overall discussion of the game in game terms, and then, later, an interview with the developers, focusing specifically on the challenges of software development.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go comb some flax.